Your definition of "good use" I guess is different from mine. I'm not their accountant, but I was involved with a good bit of the initial expenditures, and I stand by my statement. I'm not claiming that every penny was optimized for maximum return, or that there was never any money spent on something unneccesary (especially use/lose funding) but at the same time there was a definite effort to see that every aquisition would add directly to the lab's capability. The very fact that there is _one_ DOD lab and not one Air Force lab, one Coast Guard lab, one Army lab, one Navy lab, and one Marine lab is in itself an unusually wise spending choice for our government. And if you're talking about the purpose the equipment is being used for, I repeat my earlier statement that putting pedophiles (and other criminals) behind bars is worthwhile.
Used to work there. As far as your other question, I can't speak for the guys at fort meade, but the DOD lab has a very good relationship with most of the other intelligence and law-enforcement agencies. You are correct that there have historically been some problems between different agencies, but that has generally been a question of personality conflict rather than true interagency problems. As far as I know, because the charters are so different for the DOD and the other agencies, there is very little duplication of effort. In fact, the main reason for the DOD lab in the first place was to centralize this type of capability in one place rather than duplicating it for each branch of the service, which was the previous way of doing things.
You need to read the article a little better. This lab isn't just about cut up floppies..... It's a complete digital evidence handling facility. You might be amazed if you knew how much a blood evidence processing facility costs to stand up, for example. I am intimatly familiar with the lab, and know that the money being spent is being put to "good use". The technique for disk-splicing was originally developed to successfully prosecute a murderer. And besides the script kiddies which have been taken out of action, there are a large number of pedophiles, rapists, spies, and just about every other type of criminal you can think of that has been taken down with the help of the lab (which has been in operation (and using Linux) for over 4 years). And yes, the cluster runs Linux.
In order to be prosecuted, you need at least three images present on your hard disk. In addition, none of the cases that I came into contact with were prosecuted soley on the presence of 3 images. In every case there were significant additional items of evidence (chat logs, stories, e-mail etc.) I am aware of cases where an individual was using automated software to decode pornography posted to usenet and possessed several pornographic images of children, but was not prosecuted. It was clear by the contents of his machine that the child pornography was incidental to the adult porn that he downloaded, classified, and kept. On the other hand, there was a case where an individual was successfully prosecuted for possesion of 3 nude(not sexually explicit) pictures of children. This was due to the large collection of pedophilic stories and journal entries also present on his machine. The justice system is generally (with some notable exceptions)not patient with people who waste it's time bringing cases to trial that are without merit, so a great deal of care goes into picking what to prosecute.
I also use Music Match 4, also the registered version. I have encoded over 200 CDs and haven't encountered an of the artifacts that the others have been talking about. I have a $250.00 set of Altec Lansing speakers with subwoofer and find that the sound quality has been excellent. I listen to a good bit of classical, and even the strings and brass are crisp. I also like alternative and industrial and the BOOM at the bottom is critical to me as well. Although I don't have any numbers for you, I can say that I reccomend it without hesitation.
If you have problems with Tom's, or are just looking for another look at hardware, you can read any of the following sites: http://www.anandtech.com http://www.hardocp.com http://www.sharkyextreme.com http://www.cpureview.com http://www.firingsquad.com I read all of these regulary, and find that if one site doesn't have what I'm looking for another one will. There are dozens of good hardware sites out there, you don't need to limit yourself to just one. These are only a sampling of my favorites. Also, yes the Athlon will be SMP capable, and since it uses the Alpha bus should be able to do 4x or 8x systems far better than XEON.
I won't try to speculate as to motherboard costs, but the other information is fairly easy to locate in the various articles that have appeared on the net. Because AMD is attempting to minimize the cost to third-party developers, they are using a design that is physically fairly close to the Pentium II spec. This leads me to believe that it will be an ATX design. Based on the information in this article, the best power supply to use seems pretty obvious: the best one you can afford. Or in other words, any name-brand quality PS should be fine, although I would look for 300w to be on the safe side. And the RAM question is simply a question of what is supported. Since the first chipsets have been stated to support PC100 SDRAM, (and I would guess PC133) then you want to get RAM with a good CAS rating (look for 3) and a quick speed (IE 6-7 ns). As the newer chipsets and MB designs become avaiable you will want to look into RDRAM, but as the yields are still very low I don't think this will be a large concern for quite some time to come. Good PC100 SDRAM looks to be of use for quite a while.
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Your definition of "good use" I guess is different from mine. I'm not their accountant, but I was involved with a good bit of the initial expenditures, and I stand by my statement. I'm not claiming that every penny was optimized for maximum return, or that there was never any money spent on something unneccesary (especially use/lose funding) but at the same time there was a definite effort to see that every aquisition would add directly to the lab's capability. The very fact that there is _one_ DOD lab and not one Air Force lab, one Coast Guard lab, one Army lab, one Navy lab, and one Marine lab is in itself an unusually wise spending choice for our government. And if you're talking about the purpose the equipment is being used for, I repeat my earlier statement that putting pedophiles (and other criminals) behind bars is worthwhile.
Used to work there. As far as your other question, I can't speak for the guys at fort meade, but the DOD lab has a very good relationship with most of the other intelligence and law-enforcement agencies. You are correct that there have historically been some problems between different agencies, but that has generally been a question of personality conflict rather than true interagency problems. As far as I know, because the charters are so different for the DOD and the other agencies, there is very little duplication of effort. In fact, the main reason for the DOD lab in the first place was to centralize this type of capability in one place rather than duplicating it for each branch of the service, which was the previous way of doing things.
You need to read the article a little better. This lab isn't just about cut up floppies..... It's a complete digital evidence handling facility. You might be amazed if you knew how much a blood evidence processing facility costs to stand up, for example. I am intimatly familiar with the lab, and know that the money being spent is being put to "good use". The technique for disk-splicing was originally developed to successfully prosecute a murderer. And besides the script kiddies which have been taken out of action, there are a large number of pedophiles, rapists, spies, and just about every other type of criminal you can think of that has been taken down with the help of the lab (which has been in operation (and using Linux) for over 4 years). And yes, the cluster runs Linux.
In order to be prosecuted, you need at least three images present on your hard disk. In addition, none of the cases that I came into contact with were prosecuted soley on the presence of 3 images. In every case there were significant additional items of evidence (chat logs, stories, e-mail etc.) I am aware of cases where an individual was using automated software to decode pornography posted to usenet and possessed several pornographic images of children, but was not prosecuted. It was clear by the contents of his machine that the child pornography was incidental to the adult porn that he downloaded, classified, and kept. On the other hand, there was a case where an individual was successfully prosecuted for possesion of 3 nude(not sexually explicit) pictures of children. This was due to the large collection of pedophilic stories and journal entries also present on his machine. The justice system is generally (with some notable exceptions)not patient with people who waste it's time bringing cases to trial that are without merit, so a great deal of care goes into picking what to prosecute.
I also use Music Match 4, also the registered version. I have encoded over 200 CDs and haven't encountered an of the artifacts that the others have been talking about. I have a $250.00 set of Altec Lansing speakers with subwoofer and find that the sound quality has been excellent. I listen to a good bit of classical, and even the strings and brass are crisp. I also like alternative and industrial and the BOOM at the bottom is critical to me as well. Although I don't have any numbers for you, I can say that I reccomend it without hesitation.
If you have problems with Tom's, or are just looking for another look at hardware, you can read any of the following sites: http://www.anandtech.com http://www.hardocp.com http://www.sharkyextreme.com http://www.cpureview.com http://www.firingsquad.com I read all of these regulary, and find that if one site doesn't have what I'm looking for another one will. There are dozens of good hardware sites out there, you don't need to limit yourself to just one. These are only a sampling of my favorites. Also, yes the Athlon will be SMP capable, and since it uses the Alpha bus should be able to do 4x or 8x systems far better than XEON.
I won't try to speculate as to motherboard costs, but the other information is fairly easy to locate in the various articles that have appeared on the net. Because AMD is attempting to minimize the cost to third-party developers, they are using a design that is physically fairly close to the Pentium II spec. This leads me to believe that it will be an ATX design. Based on the information in this article, the best power supply to use seems pretty obvious: the best one you can afford. Or in other words, any name-brand quality PS should be fine, although I would look for 300w to be on the safe side. And the RAM question is simply a question of what is supported. Since the first chipsets have been stated to support PC100 SDRAM, (and I would guess PC133) then you want to get RAM with a good CAS rating (look for 3) and a quick speed (IE 6-7 ns). As the newer chipsets and MB designs become avaiable you will want to look into RDRAM, but as the yields are still very low I don't think this will be a large concern for quite some time to come. Good PC100 SDRAM looks to be of use for quite a while.